Malfi arrived in the middle toilet stall of the men’s room. The Saurians had chosen it as the best way of concealing him initially, though it was not ideal. But he was lucky: the only other man there was locked into a cubicle of his own. Malfi had plenty of time to check his appearance in the mirror and make sure he had the beeper and the ticket mock-up before entering the airport proper.

No.2 in the Small Beer Press chapbook is by Canadian writer Dora Knez. Previously Dora has been published in Tesseracts and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. She attended the Clarion Writers’ Workshop in 1995. The five cross-genre stories and three poems here represent a writer with a deft touch and a sure eye. The (almost) title story, “The One Forbidden Thing” and “Vaster Than Empires” received honorable mentions in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror (vols. XIII & XIV, respectively).

“a fine burgeoning talent.”
— Asimov’s

“…one admires Knez’s gift for language. It should come as no surprise that three poems of impeccable craftmanship follow the five narrative prose works…”
— Star*Line

Fiction
The Good Housekeeper
The One Forbidden Thing
Vaster Than Empires
HumanitAid, Inc.Perpetual Motion — read it here

PoetryThe Retreat of Glaciers/Kettle Pond
If I Had Wings
Stick Man

“Dora Knez shows us those small magics by which people survive. Her prose is nimble; her voice, subtle; her heroines, unforgettable. Dora! Dora! Dora!”
— Karen Joy Fowler

“Dora Knez brews a physic for the wondrous everyday pains and sorrows. Her writing is, purely and simply, magic: gentle as the touch of a child’s hands on its parent’s face; quiet as a lullabye whispered into the ear; and sometimes, fearsome as the squalling changeling who has replaced the babe you love.”
— Nalo Hopkinson

“I put Dora Knez and the short fiction and poetry collected in this chapbook in the same category as Jeffrey Steingarten’s The Man Who Ate Everything, Holes by Louis Sachar, Tove Jansson, Carol Emshwiller, Dylan Horrocks, the poetry of Carol Anne Duffy, Christine Garren, Erica Funkhauser: I want to recommend Knez to strangers and give her to friends. Dora Knez’s writing is sturdy, generous, lively and intricate. She’s a writer I think other readers should know about.”
— Kelly Link